(Sa)voir, voiler, valoir

How can we practice or learn a craft when visual access to its components is strategically obstructed or prevented by others? In order to answer that question, this article focuses on the formation of visual expertise among watchmakers in the Swiss watch industry. In line with works in the humanities and social sciences which question the relationships between seeing, knowing and belonging, the article examines the ways in which watchmakers acquire a certain visual expertise by experiencing visibility problems induced by practices of dissimulation and veiling committed by peers (secrets, concealment, masking but also silences and unspoken). On the basis of stories and observations collected during a four-year ethnography, conducted with professionals and apprentices in companies, schools and professional fairs of the Swiss Jura Arc region, the article aims to show that practices of veiling constitute some of the particular modalities by which the skilled vision of watchmakers and the visual expertise that it establishes, is shaped, learned and transmitted.